STANSTED AIRPORT: Reports suggest airport sale

9:29am Wednesday 20th August 2008

A 290-PAGE document which concludes that Stansted Airport should be sold is “flawed”, current airport owner BAA claims.

The Competition Commission is proposing that two of BAA’s London airports – Gatwick and Stansted – should be sold, along with one in Scotland.

The report states “The significance of BAA’s ownership of the four south-east airports (including Stansted), and of Edinburgh and Glasgow airports, is that common ownership is a feature that prevents competition between them.

“Airline customers of those airports, and consequently air passengers, have been deprived of the innovation and enterprise that competition between them would bring.

“We recognise BAA was privatised as a whole for good reason, in particular, to ensure capacity development in the south east. While capacity has increased over the last 20 years, there has been no new runway capacity, and there is now an acute shortage of capacity in the south east.

“We have found that common ownership of BAA’s airports can no longer be considered an engine of capacity development. Rather, it has become a brake on it.”

A BAA statement said: “The Competition Commission's findings should be assessed in the light of the urgent need for new airport capacity and a modern regulatory framework, as well as the need, which we recognise, for improved service from the airport operator.

“The Commission’s findings state that the lack of runway capacity is a main reason for what it calls the current poor standards of service and the lack of resilience at times of disruption, which results in regular delays. By calling not just for a fundamental restructure of BAA but also for a review of the Government’s Air Transport White Paper, the Commission risks delaying that delivery of new runways and making better customer service less, not more, likely.

BAA said it will be seeking “urgent clarification” from the Government of how it believes the report’s findings can be reconciled with the air transport policy it established in 2003 and its current review of economic regulation.

A BAA spokesman said: “We note however this is not the end of the Competition Commission process and we will continue to point out to the Commission the many areas where we believe its analysis is flawed and its remedies would be disproportionate and counter-productive.

“Just as the Government is about to make the decisions that could lead to the first full-length runways being built in the south east since the second world war, the Commission risks creating uncertainty, delay and confusion at exactly the wrong time.

Editor's choice